


I need my role in this, very clearly defined

by Aaronlisa



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-30
Updated: 2011-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-28 11:52:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaronlisa/pseuds/Aaronlisa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, Claire loses herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I need my role in this, very clearly defined

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sharkgloves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkgloves/gifts).



> This spans most of Season Two and how Claire becomes Whiskey by the events in Epitaph One.

She's falling apart day by day, hour by hour, maybe even second by second. She's not quite sure who she is anymore. Is she just a doll with an imprint that is slowly deteriorating? Is she Whiskey the doll who Alpha slashed and hacked in order to make Echo number one? Is she a doctor who looks after her patients, even when they're nothing more than blank slates waiting to be filled with Topher's chalk? Is she a doctor who hates her job because of the people she has to treat, people who are exploited every single hour? Or is she just a broken little puppet dressed up to play the doctor because she has no other use with her scars?

Half of the time Claire Saunders has migraines because she's not sure of who she is anymore. The other half, she's certain that the migraines are because of the treatments (that are cleverly disguised appointments with the chair that all employees of the dollhouse must under go. She sometimes wonders who else is a doll in disguise.) She can't stand the sight of her face in the mirror anymore. Once it was because of the scars that Alpha gave her, now it's because she's not sure who's actually looking back at her anymore. There was a time when she was certain of who she was, when she never doubted that she was Claire Saunders. Now that she knows that Claire is nothing more than a construct devised by Topher, she's full of doubt.

Where does she begin and where does Topher's work end? If she scratches hard enough, she wonders who she'll find underneath the prim and proper facade? Who's body did she steal so that she could be a real girl instead of a digital puppet on a hard drive?

If it's Topher who almost destroys her, then it's Boyd who almost saves her.

It's Boyd who makes her look in the mirror, who makes her _see_ herself. He takes away her doubt and gives her back her certainty. He whispers in her ear as he holds her in front of the mirror, her hand gentle on her jaw: _It doesn't matter how you came to be, it only matters who you are._ And for once the words don't jangle in her ears, instead they're heavy with the truth. Claire finds herself falling in love with him because it doesn't matter who she was before Whiskey, it doesn't matter who she was before she was Claire. All that matters is Claire and for a brief, glorious moment, Claire rushes towards ecstasy and breaks free of the constraints that Topher had programmed her with.

She never sees the scalpel that Boyd cleverly holds until it's far too late and then Clyde is in her body, in her brain, in her psyche, tearing it apart. And she even though she can feel him, she can't fight him or against him. It horrifies her even more than not knowing if she's real or not ever did. In the end it's Echo who saves her. They irony isn't lost on Claire: unknowingly Echo had started it all when she fueled Alpha's obsession but in the end Echo knowingly ends it.

In the end, Claire loses herself. Echo can't save her from herself. She loses definition slowly over time. With no patients to tend to, no blank dolls to care for, no Geppatto to pull her strings, she slowly empties until she becomes nothing more than a shell. One day Claire is just gone. Erased. And in her place, Whiskey roams the halls of the dollhouse, a forgotten and lonely ghost who's only function now is to wait.

((END))


End file.
